A blog about genealogy and thoughts about the various roots and branches of my family tree as well as the times in which my ancestors lived.Included are the West, White,and McFarland families.WARNING:DO NOT TAKE ALL OF MY FAMILY RECORDS AS GOSPEL. ALWAYS CONFIRM YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

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Thursday, November 22, 2012

THE FOURTH ANNUAL GREAT GENEALOGY POETRY CHALLENGE 2012

Welcome to the Fourth Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge!The rules for the Challenge are simple:

1. Find a poem by a local poet, famous or obscure, from the regionone of your ancestors lived in. It can be about an historical event, alegend, a person, or even about some place (like a river)or a localanimal. It can even be a poem you or one of your ancestors have written!Or if you prefer, post the lyrics of a song or a link to a videoof someone performing the song.

While there were no songs or videos submitted this year, there were somereally great poetry submissions. The poets range from famous figures toa grandmother writing about her granddaughters and a daughter writing about her father. There are two that will amuse you and one that will make you smile through tears. There might not be as many entries as in previousyears but their quality makes up for the lack of quantity.So let's begin!

Dorene Paul of Graveyard Rabbit of Sandusky Bay brings us a poem written by an unknown poet in which Sandusky Bay itself offers aVerse in Honor of Sandusky Pioneers . It reminds me a bit of Walt
Whitman.Over at TransylvanianDutch John Newmark chose two poets that havea connection to his ancestors' home in England, and they are bothwell-known writers. The first, "The Blacksmith" by Charles DickensJohn chose because some of his ancestors followed that trade. Thesecond is a satirical poem, "The Bigot", by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.Both poems are humorous, but "The Blacksmith" wins the WillyPuckerbrush Award for Most Humorous Poem. Read them both in Fourth Annual Genealogy Poetry Challenge: Portsmouth, Hampshire

Barbara Poole was researching some names and a location and did a
Google search. What she found was an obituary, and a poem. It's on
Barbara's Life from the Roots blog in the post she entitled

over on the Nutfield Genealogy blog. Her grandmother wrote many
poems, and what makes the two poems Heather chose special is that
they are about her and her sister.

My Ellingwood family cousin Pam Carter and I have ancestral roots in
Bethel, Maine. Pam found a poem by Lucy Larcom, a poet from Beverly,
Massachusetts where our Ellingwood ancestors lived. Talk about
synchronicity! Read On the Ledge by Lucy Larcom at My Maine Ancestry..

When Debbie's father died she couldn't find an appropriate poem for the
back of his funeral card, so she wrote one herself. She did a wonderful job.
This is my favorite submission in this year's Challenge. Go to her post

Funeral Card Friday- Dad at Mascot Manor Genealogy Boston recently marked the 140th anniversary of a fire in 1872 that destroyed nearly a quarter of the city and was especially destructive of the business district. Vickie Everhart at her BeNotForgot.com blogposts a poem about that fire written by a relative, Abner W. Harmon.Its title is 1872::Great Boston Fire. Finally, for my own submission I searched for a poem that would reflect on the era of the Salem Witch trials which involved various ancestors, two of whom, Mary Towne Estey and Rebecca Blake Ames, were amongthose accused of witchcraft. I found one by the quintessential New England

5 comments:

Enjoyed the poem, "The Blacksmith." The subject of my blog, Stephen Sherwood, was a blacksmith. You inspired me to start searching for a poem written by my great grandmother. It is the only poem I can find written by any of my ancestors. Maybe next year I can submit it. It may not be a classic, but it meant a lot to me.